Karen Clancy

Director of Development and Outreach

P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for Silk Road Studies

University of California, Berkeley

Karen Leong Clancy is the Director of Development and Outreach for the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for Silk Road Studies. She has worked with the Committee of 100 and served for 14 years on the Board of Trustees for the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District. From 2013 - 2015, she was Alumni Regent on the University of California Board of Regents. She has over 30 years of experience in education, both locally and at the state level across grades K-16. She served six years as a Commissioner for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Accreditation Commission which accredits K-12 schools in California, Hawaii and international schools in East Asia. She was a member of the California Commission on Technology and Learning that drafted the Master Plan for K-12 Technology and on the Board of Directors of the California School Boards Association as the Director-at-Large, Asian Pacific Islander. In 2006, she spearheaded the education conference sponsored by the Berkeley China Initiative on Chinese language learning, “Preparing a Global Workforce,” at UC Berkeley; and in 2007, 2008, and 2009 she led the San Mateo County – UC Berkeley Summer Institute on China that provided a three-week intensive staff development course for middle school and high school teachers. She led the 2011, 2014, 2016 and 2018 Summer Institutes which were funded by Fulbright-Hays Groups Projects Abroad (an additional program grant has been funded for 2022), and organized the 2012 Summer Institute, which was designated part of President Obama’s 100,000 Strong Initiative. In 2007, she was Interim Program Director to launch the new National Center for K-16 Chinese Language Pedagogy at the University of California, Berkeley. She also worked with the California School Boards Association-sponsored Shanghai Principals Exchange that involved placing K-12 principals from Shanghai in host schools throughout California, and in the spirit of exchange, sending participating American principals to Shanghai. She has worked with the 1990 Institute on the Teachers’ Workshop and served on their board from 2017 – 2019. At UC Berkeley, she recently helped to secure an NEH planning grant to bring an exhibition related to Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves to the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.  She received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in Economics.